Why Was Rossetti Really Removed as Exorcist?

Exorcist Monsignor Stephen Rossetti was removed as exorcist in the Archdiocese of Washington. But we're not being told why. I have some ideas of my own.

On June 3, Cardinal Robert McElroy, Archbishop of Washington, removed Monsignor Stephen Rossetti as an exorcist of the archdiocese and cut all ties between the archdiocese and Rossetti’s independent organization, St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal.

Rossetti had been the D.C. exorcist for nineteen years — a psychologist, a former Air Force intelligence officer, an advisor to the bishops after the 2002 abuse crisis, and one of the most recognizable exorcists in the country. Not a fringe figure. Which made this whole episode even more surprising and confusing to me.

What set it off was a video, posted in late May, where he said his personal belief was that many, if not most, UFO sightings are actually demons. The clip went viral. By the time the news broke, it had been marked private. Which tells me something was already going on behind the curtain—perhaps long before this event triggered his removal.

The statement from the Archdiocese was slim, bare and hollow. No real reasons were given, and no detail was provided. The cardinal’s stated reason is where it gets frustrating, because there’s barely anything there. Notably missing from the statement is the kind precision the archbishop claims was problematically lacking in Monsignor Rossetti’s video.

"Statements made by Monsignor Rossetti linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center's recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church's very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism."
-From the Archdiocese’ statement

The whole rationale in the statement is one sentence: Rossetti’s statements linking UFOs to demonic presence, plus the Center’s recent use of social media, “gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.” That’s it. No specifics on which teaching, or how. No clarification of the alleged imprecise statements, which is especially peculiar. Even the Catholic outlets covering it—the Register, CNA and others—flagged that the statement gave nothing concrete.

Rossetti’s Statements Align with the Church

Was Monsignor Rossetti saying anything wrong, incorrect, or out of left field?

If you go to the theology, what Rossetti said isn’t off the rails at all. It lines up with the traditional understanding of the angelic, rooted in St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas already worked this out. In the Summa (I, q. 51, a. 2) he holds that angels — and demons, who keep their angelic nature even after the fall — can assume bodies. Not living bodies they’re fused to, but configured matter, condensed air given form and motion, moved instrumentally like puppets. A spiritual being producing something physically perceptible, capable of apparent motion.

And in I, q. 111, he treats how demons can act on the human senses and imagination, presenting appearances of things that aren’t externally there. So a deceptive aerial phenomenon, or observers being made to perceive something that isn’t really present both fit the picture. This is common knowledge amongst exorcists, but it’s actually upstream of them—it starts with Aquinas.

Read Rossetti’s quotes against that and nothing contradicts it. ‘Demons hide, they don’t want to be noticed, they manipulate’. Even the line that got singled out — that these things move at speeds humans can’t, fits assumed-body ideas of Aquinas, since the appearance is moved by something not bound by an organism’s limits.

My Opinion of Why Rossetti was Removed

So why the removal? A few honest possibilities, none of them confirmed, and the gap between how thin the official statement is and how fast the axe fell is exactly what makes this worth considering.

Understand these are my opinions and they shouldn’t be interpreted as a defense for his dismissal.

The most likely reason, I think, is that the real concern was never the metaphysics at all. Look closely at the cardinal’s sentence and notice what’s sitting right next to the demonic claim: “the Center’s recent use of social media.” That pairing is easy to skim past, but I don’t think it’s incidental. It reads less like a man worried about a point of angelology and more like a man worried about reach, and about an archdiocesan exorcist with a following in the hundreds of thousands attaching the Church’s authority to viral UFO content. A bishops’-conference spokesperson, Theresa. Farnan, basically said as much, reframing the whole episode as a communications problem rather than a doctrinal one:

“Monsignor Rossetti acknowledged that the question of life on other planets was theologically neutral and clearly intended to warn against spiritual manipulation, which can occur whenever you place your trust in something other than God.”

She added that his comments “were distorted”, probably not that Rossetti’s comments themeless were distorted, but that how they were received/treated/interpreted was.

Given that reading, the offense wasn’t what he believed or said, it was that he said it as a public figure and exorcist seen as a representative of the Church. An exorcist speaks with a delegated, semi-official voice on exactly these matters, and when that voice turns up in a clip racing across the internet, the line between “one priest’s personal speculation” and “the Catholic Church says UFOs are demons” disappears for most people watching. It’s a problem of prudential judgement, not theology.

The other concern might be about method, not doctrine. The Church’s discipline on discernment is famously cautious. Before anything gets attributed to the demonic, you exhaust the natural and psychological explanations first. It’s the whole posture of the exorcism rite: You assume the ordinary, prove the extraordinary.

A blanket “many, if not most, sightings are demons” subtly inverts that order, making demonic causation the default rather than the last resort. But notice it’s still only a concern about how an exorcist should reason and speak, not about whether his angelology is sound.

My Personal Conclusion

Personally, I think this dismissal was foolish and reckless, and McElroy’s actions didn’t do the church any favors. Father Rossetti was reaching a lot of people, especially with his online apostolate. It also seems that he was playing a major role in liberating many people from real spiritual crises they were experiencing, and used social media as a watchtower, signaling many people and warning them about the dangers of the occult, witchcraft, and the lures of neo-paganism, all of which are on the rise. The Archdiocese’s rationale was a big nothing burger, and now it only looks cruel, foolish, and incompetent. This was not good administration, or good pastorship.

I’m going to give you my informed opinion. I think there’s more to this than we’re being told. There was nothing in the least bit surprising or disconcerting to me about Rossetti’s video. Nothing raised an eyebrow for me; nothing made me wince at imprecision or even risky messaging. The Archdiocese’ statement being so terse and empty suggests to me that this isn’t about doctrine, theology, or messaging. What it is about, I really couldn’t even speculate. Politics? Maybe. But politics about…what? It’s all just very strange.

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